Various video games have been proposed in the past. One such game is a competitive video game, such as a baseball video game, wherein characters and moving objects are displayed on a monitor and competitive sports are carried out. This type of baseball video game includes a game in which a person playing the video game will operate the player characters on his or her own team with a controller and score points against another team, a game in which the game itself is primarily operated automatically and the video game player enjoys the game from the position of a team manager, and the like. With the former game, the video game player's own team will engage in offense and defense by operating the player characters with the controller so as to cause them to hit and throw the ball. In particular, when a player character is the pitcher, the video game player will cause the pitcher character to throw the ball to the catcher character simply by indicating the destination of the ball (the position of the catcher character's mitt) and the type of pitch to be thrown with the controller. The ball control by the pitcher character at this time is automatically determined according to the throwing ability of the pitcher character, the type of pitch specified by the video player, and the like.